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Police act against UNE in Ecuador after TU mission leaves

Following the issuing of a resolution to dissolve UNE, Ecuador’s leading teachers’ union, Public Services International—one of the global unions to which UNE is affiliated—issued the following press release on 30 August, 2016:

At 5am on 29 August, police officers accompanied by public prosecution service officers and members of the Winding-Up Commission appointed by the Ministry of Education violently entered UNE offices in Quito and Guayaquil and confiscated documents and computers.

At 11.30 am, the police again ransacked the Quito office and violently evicted everyone in the office, including women and children.

On 25 August, an international trade union mission comprising representatives of the PSI, Education International (EI) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), led by the Subregional Secretary of the PSI’s Andean Region, Juan Diego Gomez, made an emergency visit to Ecuador to express their solidarity with UNE after the Ministry of Education issued a resolution dissolving the country’s most representative teachers’ union and making arrangements to wind-up the union’s affairs.